


Exchange

by Kit



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s05e02 The Beast Below, Episode: s05e12 The Pandorica Opens, F/F, Timey-Wimey, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-14
Updated: 2011-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-19 09:30:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River Song encounters the Royal Collection as a seventeen-year-old student. And she hasn't even shot anyone. Set a week or so after The Pandorica Opens. Somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Royal Collection

“Oi. No need to stare like you’ve never seen _me_ before, miss.”

 River shifted. She did, all things considered, _appreciate_ a dashing rescue, especially from someone who cut a very interesting figure in red drapery, holding a gun the way other people grasped another’s hand. And she did seem proof that any woman, given time, might do fabulous things with natural curl. Still, all the staring was a bit much.

“I haven’t,” she said. _Go on an exchange_. That’s what she’d been offered. Time and funds for new digs and new constellations. Alien dirt beneath her nails, subtly ingrained in the reports she would send back to make her name.  A 51 st century student’s dream.

So far, all she’d seen was Devon, light up from a tower reaching practically familiar sky. Devon, and highwaymen.   _Actual_ highwaymen, with tricorn hats and flapping coats, anachronistic and smug from it, right down to their polished boots and period cutlasses, at least until her rescuer had shown up and melted one of them against the building. Nothing worse than boys in hats, really.   

The other woman sniffed. “You do look a bit young, out of the catsuit.”

“I was wearing a catsuit before we were properly introduced?” River sighed. “Oh dear.”

“ _I_ was properly introduced.” Air hissed from clenched teeth. “ _I’m_ the bloody Queen. Same as last week. Liz Ten.”

“ _Elizab—?”_

“Robes and all,” said Liz. “Though it should be Eleven, soon, I suppose. I’m starting to make people nervous. And _you_ are no one.”

“I’m River Song,” snapped River Song, tucking a spiral curl behind her ear. “From the—”

“— _You’re_ the student who wanted in on the Royal Collection?” Liz was staring again, now, lips pursed. “Don’t be daft. You were nicking a painting from it last week.  For The Doctor.”

Liz Ten-to-Eleven swallowed, River noting the length of her neck as she did so. Stamp collecting as a girl was not quite the same thing as taking in _this_ sort of face, though she was increasingly sure that she’d been slipped a hallucinogenic in-transit. “The what?”

“The _Doctor_. Did one of those idiots back there hit you, or something?”

“Doctor _who_?”

“River Song,” said the Queen, “I think, by the time we’re done with each other, one of us is going to fall down some stairs. You’re some _student_?”

“You really know the Royal Collection?”

“I _am_ the Royal Collection!”

“Well,” River mused, looking at the madwoman.  “That’s going be _interesting_ , I suppose. I’ll just have to know you better. I _do_ like your gun.”

“Helps me rule.” Liz eyed her, head cocked.  “Ever shot anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t start. It’s hard to stop.”

“See? _Interesting.”_

“You do realise,” said Liz, “That it’s a capital offence to flirt with your Queen?”

“You’re not _my Queen_ ,” River smiled, shaking out all strange references to previous meetings and absent medical staff. “And you were the one who started on the catsuit.”

“I’m not, am I?” Liz snorted.  “Anarchist?”

“Archaeologist.”

A laugh, warm and hoarse and definitely interesting. “Not _yet_ you ain’t,” she said. “You’re either the unknown lady of the night with fabulous tits, who takes paintings from under my very nose for a very important man, or you’re some off-planet exchange student who’s managed to kiss her way into the best artefacts the crown has to offer. Pick one.”

River blinked. “Surely I have fabulous tits in _both_ scenarios?”

Liz smirked. “You improve with age. Nothing wrong with that, so did I.”

“I think,” said River, “You’d best distract me with some artefacts right about now.”   





	2. Pillow Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz and River. Whiskey. Knowledge. Fragmentary things.

Her world was a blur of hoplite shields and bedsheets; whiskey from the 30th century served in glasses from the 17th, fine enough to take the warmth of her skin and just kept in a cabinet, easy as air, for extra guests. Notation only gathered up so much.

“You _can’t_ expect me to believe you’re three hundred and fifty years old.”

River saluted the Queen easily as she spoke, her drink sliding languid up the side of her glass.

Liz shrugged. “Or close enough it makes no difference. But you should like that, and all.”

“Oh?”

“ _Archaeologist.”_ Liz reached out to tap her guest’s cheek, sharp and light, smirking as River turned her head, not _quite_ catching fingertips with teeth.

Smiling, River let her eyes rest on the other woman’s face. Stern and strong, with cheekbones a better artist might catch in ink, along with the dark cloud of hair. “I like an extra millennia or so on top of that,” she said.

“Well, this is all you’re getting.”

“I’m not _complaining_.” The younger woman grinned. “You know, ma’am, you’re terriblyeasy to wind up.”

“You have no idea.”

***

The slow, sweet warmth of lips on skin, using teeth and tongue and pressure to draw a pulse up between the two of them, driven to the speed of her own heart, and then past it, when she felt urgent hands tangle in her hair and push her down— _down_ —and River laughed in the joy of it as the Queen pressed against her face and mouth.

***

“Oooh.” River let her hands, still slick and warm, drift over cool, 21st century metal. “These look _solid_.”

“The real thing,” said Liz, catching the other woman’s wrists and laughing at the noise that escaped River’s throat when the handcuffs clicked and closed.

***

“Mmmph. Do you still think I stole from you?”

River held her wrists above her head, eying the faint red lines with favour, while candlelight shadows flicked over her skin. Liz’s hair ticked her shoulder and neck, scents catching in the back of her throat as memories still lingered close enough for her to smile and stretch and revel in them.  “Or did you just think I’d look good locked up? I’ve never stolen _anything_ , you know.”

“Hah.”

“I was a _good_ child.”

Liz laughed, kissing her softly. “So _you_ remember, maybe.”

“I don’t, actually.” River shrugged, letting one hand slide up the other woman’s broad shoulder. “Remember much.”

“And you’re not even three-hundred-and-bloody _fifty_.”

River smiled. “You keep saying that like it’s a newthing.”

“About fifty years new, to me,” said the Queen. “Turns out that doesn’t mean much at all.”

“You’re fast turning into a cipher, your majesty.”

Liz snorted. “Right.”

“Ciphers,” said River, “Are my _favourite_ thing.”


	3. Mnemonics and doors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz teaches River Song what do with a gun.

“You’re too showy. That’s the bloody problem.”

  
“Excuse me?”

  
“It’s all the balance. See?”

  
River felt hands move along her back, her arms. Twine firmly about her wrist and re-settling the gun. She could feel the slim, sometime-human Queen against her back, too, awareness pooling into the warmth of her hips and belly. A deep, sparking pull back into the question of exactly how many layers of clothing they wore between them.

  
“You’re making it—uh— _quite_ a challenge, ma’am,” she murmured, rocking back from her hips.

  
“Oi.  If you’ve got armies running at you, princess, it’ll be a lot harder to concentrate _then_.”

  
“ _Princess_?”

  
Liz bit her earlobe. River’s fingers jerked against the trigger.

  
Her eyes widened at the flash. The shudder. The small dark hole at the centre of the target where that had been only white paint before.

  
“There.” Liz drew up her free hand into River’s hair, gathering up the weight of it and kissing the back of her neck. “See?”

  
River shot again.

  
And again. And again. And again.

  
***

  
Liz was quiet, after. This might not have bothered River—the Queen had been quiet a great deal of the last three months, sorting through her miraculous collection of worldly things while the archaeology student made rapturous notes. There was a seriousness in her, running deep under all the words and laughter and whiskey, and it sometimes rose up and just _sat_ , soft and still inside. But this silence seemed to chill around the gun in River’s hand. A gift, and a _fine_ one, made to fit her hand the way the mask Liz never spoke of seemed moulded to fit her own face.   

  
In the end, River had to break it.

  
“Is this about the tomb?”

  
“What?”

  
“Tomb. Your family tomb. The _excellent_ sex. Never had anything like it, but if it makes you feel _this_ bad, Liz, than I’m—“

  
“—ah, shut it.” Liz’s fine mouth twisted, half a smile. “This isn’t about tombs.”

  
“Oh, good. I liked that memory. Wrote it down. But, ma’am—” Liz’s hands were cold in her own as she reached for them, letting her own, already work-roughened fingertips trace the inside of the older woman’s wrist. “I’d still like to understand.”

  
“You’d like to understand _everything_ , River Song,” Liz muttered.

  
“And that is a bad thing?” River did not release Liz’s hands, letting them rise with her own shoulders in a slow shrug. “I don’t see how.”

  
“Understand, then, that I did _terrible things_.”

  
River swallowed. “You’re a Queen,” she said. “From what I understand, it comes from the territory. History, you know.”

  
“ _Terrible_ bloody things, and it was all in innocence,” said Liz, clear. “That was bad enough. But _then_ , every ten years, I’d know. I’d _know_ , and then I’d have this choice. All laid out, like necklaces. Or buttons. And every year, I chose to forget.”

  
“I don’t—”

  
“—no, you _don’t_ understand.” Liz, magnificent and shadowed by all ten of her namesakes, broke out of River’s grasp, and got to her feet. Her own tall silhouette stripped across River’s body.  “But I do now, and I just taught you to shoot anyway.”

  
River started. “Because I _asked,”_ she breathed, soft and confused.

  
“And how many things will people teach you, River, just because you ask? Secrets? Poisons?” The Queen shrugged, slumping a little. “You’ve got the face for it. The mind. And you’re _good_ , you know. Promise me something.”

  
Looking into the wide, dark eyes that held no gilded trace of laughter, now, River felt cold. Weighed and judged and cold, found wanting. “No promises,” she whispered.

  
“ _Promise_ me,” snapped the Queen, unhearing, “That you won’t forget when you do great and terrible things. You look any person in the eye when you’ve got that pretty gun of yours, or any of the thousands that might follow it, and you _know_ what you’re going to do. Shoot straight and remember afterwards, so that when we meet again I’ll still recognise you.”

  
“I don’t think,” said River, soft and low as she drew Liz’s gift from its new side-holster, “That we _will_ meet again, somehow.”

  
Liz snorted, sitting down. “Shows what you know.”

  
River shrugged. “No,” she said. “I’ll go home the next flight out, and write the best dissertation they’ve ever seen.” She smiled. A quick flash of teeth. “And make room for target practise. And think of you, of course. One should always think of firsts.”

  
Liz’s own smile was slow, pulling at them both. “Is that right?”

  
“Oh, yes. First gun. First... _well_. That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

  
“I think you just told.”

  
“You _think_. That’s the point. First rescue, certainly. Maybe I’ll do the rescuing, next time.”

  
“With that?” Liz’s nod was toward the gun.

  
“With _all_ of me, as in anything. Maybe I’ll be lucky, and there’ll be a rapturous response.”

  
“That was,” said Liz Ten, looking at her recent guest, “Worth quite a lot.” 


End file.
